People often ask artists “Where do you get the ideas for your images?” In my case many of the ideas come from the things I see in my every day life combined with the way my mother taught me to look at those things.

My mom had both a child-like sense of wonder and an insatiable curiosity about the world around her. She observed and studied everything that caught her interest—from linguistics to natural sciences to physics to psychology to history—and everything in between.

She liked to hike, and whenever she set out she would take with her a magnifying glass, first a hand-held Sherlock Holmes-style glass, and later a smaller one that hung on a cord around her neck. As she walked she would often pick up some stray object—a leaf or maybe a pebble—and examine it through the glass. When we hiked together she would share with me anything of particular interest or beauty.

She persisted in this sharing almost to the day she died. I remember just a few days before her death, she looked out the window from her bed and said to me, “Oh, look at the color of the light!” And when I looked she was right. It was beautiful.

Although she is gone now I still try to see things with the sense of wonder and appreciation that I learned from my Mom—and to then find ways to pass on to others what I’ve experienced.